Biography

Dr. Stephen A. Sherblom has a doctorate in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard University, a Masters in Personality and Social Psychology from Harvard University, and a B.A. in Philosophy and Psychology from the University of Massachusetts. Before coming to Lindenwood to work in the doctoral program, he taught at the University of Missouri, and completed a post-doctoral appointment at Washington University in St. Louis.

Awards

Awarded - Top Ten Most Downloaded Articles in Journal of Moral Education 2012 and 2013:

University of Massachusetts Philosophy Department Award for Excellence, June 1987

Research Interests

My research and writing interests cluster around moral development - moral education, character development, ethics, moral psychology, positive psychology, and moral identity. I am involved with a group of scholars focusing on Intellectual Virtues and their role in education. Last fall I presented at the Association for Moral Education on the place of In-groups / Out-groups in moral deliberation. At next November's moral development conference I will be presenting on the uses of complexity thinking in conceptualizing the developing moral self.

All of these interests come together in a writing project I am just beginning. This book length treatment will lay out for readers the place of human connection and love in human evolution, its current position in human nature and the structure of our needs, and its connection to our ethics and moral development. Philosophers have traditionally excluded the ethical teachings of Jesus from the study of ethics because, they argued, it is mixed up with or even based in theology. I am developing the argument that there are a viable ethics of love there regardless of theological committments, especially when seen in light of our evolutionary past and scientific understanding of human nature.

Teaching Interests

In my teaching I focus on educational research and research design.

I teach Capstone II (EDA 77000), the second course in our three course research series. In this course students use a Prospectus, a form asking detailed questions about their doctoral study design. Students are assisted in this process through feedback from the professor, consultation with their Doctoral Dissertation Committee Chair, and brainstorming sessions such as our CORD Meetings (Conversations On Research Design) students are assisted in designing a sound proposal.

I also teach EDA 76800, Qualitative Research Methods for Education, which explores various qualitative data-gathering techniques, forms of analysis, and write-up. In this course students get first-hand experience with each technique - doing observations, designing a survey and questionnaire, designing and completing a focus group, and conducting an interview. All of the techniques will be used to collect data around a single Research Question such that students will also get experience analyzing the data and presenting it in written form as a final project.

Symposium on Dynamic Systems and Complexity in Moral Psychology (organizer); Presenting Paper: Complexity and the social sciences: A path for moral psychology?Association for Moral Education Conference - San Antonio, Texas November 8-11, 2012.